Baldy Cinco trip report

It's challenging to make it all the way to the Frickonthorne area
(i.e., Summit County) in one day from Arizona and then try to
hike the next morning. So, I spent a couple nights in Pagosa
Springs so I could do a hike "near" there on the way. This
isn't the most convenient location for 13ers, but was a
reasonable compromise between driving times to get there, get to
some peaks, and get to Summit County the next day. It also gave
me the time to stop at Four Corners on the way, which was a
reasonable $3, albeit 100+ degrees.

There is a long ridge of 13ers leading east from Spring Creek
Pass between Creede and Lake City that ends up reaching 14er San
Luis Peak. A very ambitious hiker in ideal weather can get 4 of
them on one hike, but it is something like 15 miles and 5000
feet of gain. The first two peaks, Point 13313 and Cinco Baldy,
can be easily climbed together, which leaves a slightly more
modest trip to get the other two.

It is a 2 hour drive from Pagosa Springs, over Wolf Creek Pass,
through South Fork and Creede, and over Wagon Wheel Gap. The
Continental Divide National Scenic Trail crosses the highway at
Spring Creek Pass and provides the majority of the elevation
gain for Baldy Cindo.

I crossed the road at 0822 to start up the trail. Not an
optimal starting time, but since I was only going to do the two
peaks, I was expecting a 4 hour hike or so. It seems to always
take me about 30 minutes to really feel good on a hike at
altitude, especially if I'm not well acclimatized. Also, in
this case, my two-hour old breakfast still wasn't digesting very
well. But, I maintained a 25+ fpm climb rate up the moderately
steep trail, which starts on a ridge, then crosses into a
prominent gully.

The top of the gully is very abrupt and you suddenly crest onto
Snow Mesa, which as expected wasn't living up to its name. I
took a short break here. I followed the trail a bit further,
but soon you need to angle left to hit the south slopes of Baldy
Cinco, of which you have an excellent view. The other option
would be to angle left sooner and head up to the saddle between
the peaks, but the west side of Cinco is steep and much better
done as a descent.

After some slightly uphill walking, you start up the first
steeper slope. A huge cairn beckons you from on high. The bad
news is that because it's so big, it is much further and higher
than you think. The good news is that once you get there, the
gradient relaxes and you are within about 200 vertical feet of
the summit. The footing is good on tundra, and the grade up to
the cairn really isn't too bad.

I reached the summit at 1015. A few cumulus clouds had
developed and I wasn't 100% happy with the weather situation. I
stuck around for a few minutes to take some pictures and video.
I was having a bit of trouble getting the lid off the summit
register, and then I didn't really care anymore.

As already noted, the west side of Cinco is steep, and there are
some gravelly parts. But, I was quickly down to the saddle and
then resumed my 25 fpm climb rate. I was concerned about the
clouds upstream as I was ascending Point 13313, but when I
summited they didn't look too threatening although some virga
was falling. At that point, I thought I had a chance for
thunder by about the time I got back to the trail. So, on the
summit, I only took a few quick pictures, a quick look at my map
to see the best escape options, and started down.

I hustled down the fairly steep east slopes, aiming to cross
East Fork Cebolla Creek whenever convenient. I descended about
400 feet in 5 minutes but unfortunately the cell rapidly got
darker and more threatening. I hoped the darkening was just a
change in the lighting, but at 1048, I heard the first thunder.

At that point, I knew I had to start executing my escape plan,
which would be to drop down into the East Fork Cebolla Creek
drainage. As the map shows, the drainage has a fairly abrupt
steepening and narrowing at around 12200 feet. I ignored the
slight possibility that it might cliff out there, knowing that I
could also traverse over to the trail in the ascent gully if
that happened.

Unfortunately, as I was jogging down the slope as best I could,
there was a lightning strike about 2 miles west. I considered
dropping my trekking poles and "assuming the position" at that
point, but I knew that the steep gully would provide much better
protection than squatting down in a wide open hillside. Not
that 2 miles is super close, but the storm was coming towards me
and any nearby lightning while you are above treeline is serious
business.

At least for me, the feeling at this point wasn't so much fear
as it was frustration at being in the situation, helplessness,
and resignation at knowing how hard it is on my body to "run"
down a mountain like this. At times I could actually run, but
it's also easy to turn an already dangerous situation into
something worse by spraining one's ankle. Luckily, most of the
slope down to the drainage is tundra with minimal rocks.

Ten minutes after the first thunder, I dropped into the steep
part of the drainage, which I could see was a rocky, managable
descent. The drainage is narrow there with steep 40-foot rock
"walls" (or so; the entire slopes of the drainage are much
taller than that) and I did feel a little safer here. Of
course, that's when the graupel started falling and a decent
breeze kicked in that was being funneled up the drainage. It
really wasn't very cold and without any actual rain I didn't
bother to get out my rain jacket.

While cowering at the base of the rocks, I saw another fairly
nearby (maybe a mile away) lightning strike to the west and
wondered how long I was going to stay there. Perhaps foolishly,
I briefly popped my DV camcorder out of my jacket pocket to
document my situation for posterity. The worst part is that due
to some malfunction (which may have been me hitting the "record"
button again), I found out later that I only got one second of
video! It would have been a nice saving grace after having
gotten myself in such a stupid situation to have had that little
record of what happened. I studied my map to get more of a
sense of how easy it would be to get down into the trees. The
bulk of this storm was now centered just to the south of me and
starting to pass my location, but I didn't know what was behind
it.

After less than 10 minutes, there had been a decent lull in the
thunder and it was all to the south or behind me to the east.
The cell wasn't moving very fast, but was certainly continuing
its southeast or east-southeast movement. There is another
steeper area in the drainage around 11900-12000 feet with a
flatter area in between. So, I decided to go for it; probably
sooner than one would "officially" be advised, but I didn't want
to still be up there if another cell were coming in and at least
this cell was sort of behaving itself.

As I stumbled down into the flatter area and was getting closer
to some ground willows, I encountered a trail. I would end up
traversing above the bottom of the drainage on this trail (which
seemed to be a human trail) and then mostly on game trails or
otherwise easy terrain. The "real" trail helped a lot through
some willows and I could start making good time and shed some
altitude. It took about 15 minutes to get into the forest for
much better lightning safety, but all of the occasional thunder
now was behind me.

Now it was a question of how soon to get up onto the ridge and
the ascent trail. I wasn't in too big of a hurry with thunder
still around, but it would allow me to go faster. I ended up
cresting the ridge at around 11500 feet as blue sky was
appearing to the west. From there, I could relax and quickly
cruise down the trail to my car which I reached just before
noon.

What a great start to a week of hiking, frying myself mentally
and physically. I knew the latter might be a significant
problem, since I'm not much of an athlete in any case. But, at
least I did manage to get the 2 13ers I had hoped to climb.
This would have been a very pleasant climb with an earlier start
or a better weather day.